President Bush tours the Continent, tries to persuade angry allies that he's not a troglodyte and searches for the soul of Vladimir Putin

George W. Bush is hungry to make a good impression this week on his first presidential tour of Europe, and no wonder. "This is the biggest trip of his life," an adviser says, his chance to look a Russian President in the eye, his chance to persuade the allies that he isn't the arrogant, missile shield-obsessed, execution-happy global warmer that so many Europeans take him to be.

How hungry is Bush? In late April, when former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who had suggested to the President's father that Dubya's foreign policy was off course, stopped at the White House to...